The folks at Powerline have highlighted the effort to elect Michael Horowitz an independent alumni representative to the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body. He needs 3,808 write-in e-mails.
It’s a vital effort: Over the past few decades, administration has ballooned at the expense of teaching faculty, and political correctness and postmodern trendiness have eroded scholarship in traditional fields like English and history. The straw that broke the camel’s back: Yale’s decision to censor a Yale University Press book about the Danish cartoon controversy. Not surprisingly, Fareed Zakaria, the administration’s handpicked corporation member, endorsed the censorship. It’s time, at Yale and elsewhere, that committee members stopped treating their jobs as an honor without responsibility, and began asking tough questions to put a real-world check on universityexcesses and return schools to their core focus: education.
Horowitz has a three-point platform:
- financial responsibility to keep tuition in check
- expand intellectual diversity on campus
- respect and tolerance for traditional culture on campus
All alumni need to do is send an e-mail to Yalepetitioncandidate@electionservicescorp.com with this simple declaration of support, “I support the Alumni Fellow petition candidacy of Michael Horowitz,” and sign their name, Yale school, and year of graduation.